Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
July 17, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com

That dude is having one crazy summer.
Hollywood is a machine. Every week, every month and every year countless films are released into theatres and not every one is as successful as the studio heads would hope. Sometimes the publicity machine was askew, sometimes the movie targeted an odd demographic, sometimes the release was steamrolled by a much larger movie and occasionally the movie is flat out bad.

But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.

Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.

Runaway Jury (2003)

First of all, I'd like and take a moment to apologize to all of my loyal readers. (Yes, that means you, Mom.) You may have noticed that Stealth Entertainment did not publish last week and that was entirely my fault. I mentioned to our esteemed leader David Mumpower that I planned on reviewing Thunderbirds (the live action movie!) and as I turned to walk away someone hit me over the head with a heavy object. When I woke up, I was locked in a trunk with 40 scorpions. After some frantic negotiation through the trunk lid, I have been released but only after vowing to clear my selections with our wise, all-knowing and scorpion-rich leader. So unfortunately, my plans to review Pluto Nash have been derailed. Instead, I will be reviewing Runaway Jury, a movie guaranteed to result in almost 100% fewer head trauma injuries, scorpion stings and trunk based vacations. Enjoy!

Everyone remembers the big summer hits. Independence Day rocked our world and wowed us with special effects. Jaws ruined beach vacations for years with clever tension and a robotic fish that kept me out of our family swimming pool until I was 14. Shoot, even Finding Nemo glued us to our seats with luscious colors and a pair of neurotic fish quipping at each other. Runaway Jury doesn't have anything like that. Nothing explodes (okay, there is one small fire), there's no violent showdown at the end, and any deaths or violence in the movie are constrained to a very brief 90 second clip at the beginning of the film when a gunman breaks into an office and starts randomly shooting people and a 30 second chunk near the end of the movie when one character beats up another one with a message board. Bad Boys this is not.

That doesn't mean this movie isn't compelling or exciting. It's easily one of the better films in my collection and one that I like to pull out and watch from time to time just to refresh myself. Runaway Jury stars John Cusack as Nicholas Easter, Rachel Weisz as Marlee, Gene Hackman as jury consultant Rankin Fitch and Dustin Hoffman as attorney Wendell Rohr. Look at that cast. Just look at it. Those are some serious actors, people.

And while there is a ton of star power on the movie poster, it's interesting the way the jury was cast in this film, because they look like real people. The women aren't "Hollywood Pretty". They look like a woman you or I might sit next to on the bus. The men (with the exception of Nick, obviously) are a little less Hollywood-ified, but they too look like the guy you sit next to at work or brush up against in the elevator on the way to see your boss with your TPS reports. They're average people, and they've been well written with average problems. It's great casting, and it isn't overplayed either. Who doesn't have a skeleton in their closet they don't want revealed to their friends and family? Who doesn't have an embarrassing or even illegal secret?

And that's what really gets this ball rolling. The trial starts and right off the bat both Nick and Rankin start working the jury over with all the subtlety of Tara Reid at an open bar. Rankin starts applying pressure, intimidating and blackmailing. Nick starts applying his own brand of pressure from the inside, and things start to escalate from there. It's a little frightening to watch just how easily people start to fold and crack under some simple pressure and how easy some of the information is to obtain. Laws are broken, sure, but it sure doesn't look very difficult for any of us to get placed in the same boat.

The movie revolves around the excessively free gun laws that the US currently employs and there is a lot of rhetoric about guns being good or bad. The movie is less than subtle about what side of that argument it's on. Nick and Wendell are clearly good guys and underdogs in this regard while Fitch and his army of weasels...er...jury consultants use every trick in the book to bend people to their draconian, mustache-twirling will. Nick fires back at Fitch constantly and the movie revolves around these two as they struggle for control of the jury while Wendell can only stare helplessly from the sidelines.

Brisk pacing and well-written dialogue ensure that we barely have time to keep up with all the posturing, maneuvering, threatening and taunting. But by the end it's clear exactly what Nick's agenda really is, and while it was somewhat telegraphed, it did put a big smile on my face. If there is a fault here it is that I connected too well with some of the poor jurors that got caught in the middle of the fracas. You wonder what happened to some of these people and if they ever managed to get their lives straightened back around, and you feel a little cheated when nobody tells you what did come next for these people.

In the end, when the credits rolled, I was happy with Runaway Jury. There's a well designed plot, excellent dialogue, world-class actors and some less than subtle commentary. It's a satisfying film, and while you may wish for a little more story, you'll certainly be satisfied by this professional and well crafted story.